Oblivion the movie – Soundtrack by M83

One of my biggest regrets at Osheaga last summer, was not seeing M83. To be fair though, they were playing on the other side of the festival, and cut heavily into the Black Keys set, which, okay, I did see the Black Keys in September 2011, but they were incredible and I wanted to see them again, and wasn’t familiar enough with M83 to make the call. I would certainly have killed to be able to see both full sets.

So when I received the soundtrack to the new movie, Oblivion, entirely done by Anthony Gonzalez of M83 and Joseph Trapanese – who has collaborated with:

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park on the movie The Raid: Redemption

Daft Punk on the movie Tron: Legacy (another project from the writer, producer and director of Oblivion, Joseph Kosinski)

And has done work with M83 before on their 2011 double-disc album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (2011)

Needless to say, I was excited. I don’t know very much about the movie at all, except for what Wikipedia has told me. The movie is based on an unpublished graphic novel written by Joseph Kosinski. Kosinski wrote the screenplay, produced and directed the movie which stars Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman and is a homage to science fiction films from the 1970s. Well I’ll admit, (and this may piss some of you off, but hey, this is a music blog, not a movie blog), I’m really not a huge fan of Tom Cruise, in fact, the very fact that he’s in the movie is kind of a turn off, but Morgan Freeman is a definite plus, and I would still see the movie, just for the soundtrack.

Listening to the Oblivion soundtrack, it’s definitely an instrumental concept album. With very little knowledge of the movie, you get a sense of the story just by listening to the album. It’s truly amazing. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch a movie as visually stunning as TRON, with this incredible soundtrack.

The title track which ends the soundtrack features vocals by Susanne Sundfør and is the perfect end to the album. Check M83 and Susanne Sundfør perform it live on Jimmy Kimmel below, and check out the movie in theatres now.

And watch this interview with Kosinski, Trapanese and Anthony Gonzalez about the making of the music of Oblivion.